


affections, merits, sensibilities

by thisparticularlight



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Canon Era, F/M, M/M, i think??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 01:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18173783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisparticularlight/pseuds/thisparticularlight
Summary: The long story short is that Eliza didn’t get there first, but she won anyway.The long story, slightly longer, is that Eliza won, and John expected to hate her for it, because the first time his eyes moved over her name, written into a letter by Alexander’s own hand with a flourish that made his eyes narrow, something dark and ugly moved inside him, and he’d thought: I was a fool, to ever believe.





	affections, merits, sensibilities

The long story short is that Eliza didn’t get there first, but she won anyway.

The long story, slightly longer, is that Eliza won, and John expected to _hate_ her for it, because the first time his eyes moved over her name, written into a letter by Alexander’s own hand with a flourish that made his eyes narrow, something dark and ugly moved inside him, and he’d thought: _I was a fool, to ever believe._

The long story, in its entirety, begins in springtime, exactly at the moment that Alexander Hamilton looked with wild eyes at John Laurens on a warm moonlit April night and shook the rain out of his hair as the frogs sang and the river ran and he said to him, with no trace of guilt or guile: _John Laurens, there is no longer a world in which I’d ever wish to live without you._

“Nor I you,” John had murmured, taken completely aback by Alexander’s honesty, let alone the sentiment itself, and startled into being alone with the truth.

The long story continues into June, when Alexander had stared at him over firelight during the hottest week of the summer, and said, with perhaps a touch of both guilt and guile: _John Laurens, I may be about to deeply upset you, for which I can only apologize_ , and then had kissed him with the sort of desperation that John had always hoped existed outside of his own heart.

“You could never upset me,” John had murmured, wondering whether Alexander was ever going to let him settle into any sort of peace. Alexander had been working his hands over the fire, and the skin of his fingertips where he cradled John’s face was almost unbearably hot as he kissed him. John had arched up into it anyway, heedless as always with Alexander of how needy he probably seemed, and had then found himself for days afterward ghosting his own fingertips over the spots where the blood had bloomed up in response to Alexander’s heat.

The long story, punctuated every so often with kisses stitched together with need and ill judgment, continues into December, when Alexander had bitten his lip nearly purple and his voice had nearly shot through with guilt and guile as he admitted: _John Laurens, I was grateful at first for this winter causing us to share a bed, but I confess that as time goes on I want only more, and more, and more_.

Had John been able to murmur, he might have murmured something like: _but of course, I was only ever going to give you more, and more, and more_. Or: _yes, yes, yes, Alexander, you may have everything_. Or even: _please, please keep doing that forever. Please never stop_. Instead, in absence of the ability to speak, he’d pressed his hips into Alexander’s over and over and over until Alexander, never once his entire life long robbed of the ability to speak, John is sure, had said: _John Laurens, Christ, you’re going to make me come_ , and as Alexander’s voice stuttered over the long _i_ in _Christ_ , John had finally found his own voice long enough to reply: _well I certainly goddamn hope so_.

Alexander’s cry had been long, and keening, and John had found himself with the nerve to thank God and goodness for the way that December whipped the snowdrifts around their tiny tar-paper cabin even as he’d held the word goddamn in his mouth like a brand, knowing: _if anyone is damned, it is certainly me_ , even as he also knew: _for you, anything_. 

The long story continues, even now, into the following March. Spring washes their camp over again with mud and regrowth, and the rivers swell again, and even as John has read Eliza Schuyler’s name written in Alexander Hamilton’s careful script, he has also seen violets springing back up over the snowmelt, and in spite of all that is unholy, impractical, improbable, and unsafe, Alexander seems quite content to keep crying out for him, long and keening, into the night. Alexander might have treated the swoops and curves of the letters of Miss Schuyler’s name with all of the gentleness in the world, but the sun keeps rising over a spring that keeps marching forward and Alexander keeps coming into John’s hand long after the other soldiers have returned to their own beds. And so, as Alexander settles himself breathlessly into the crook of John’s shoulder, after, John lets his eyes flutter close and imagine any number of ways that this story might be longer, still.

It feels like a luxury beyond anything John has ever known to lean his body, still flushed and damp, over Alexander’s to drop a kiss onto his forehead, tasting salt where sweat wicks across his hairline. It feels decadent beyond anything John could have ever imagined to be so close to Alexander even now, near enough after orgasm to where John can still feel the fight leaving Alexander’s body.

He knows this boy wants everything. He knows that when Alexander allows himself to curl into John, sleepy and sated, he is letting John see something holy, something sacred--something rare.

_I have seen the world_ , John wants to tell him. _All of these things that you want are things I have seen, done, possessed, been born into. All of these things you want are things I have. And at the end of the day, my love, all of these things are lovely, and none of them are you_.

+

The world, John often thinks, is fickle.

Time looked at him, once, and it said: _I will keep going, and so you will have more of this_. It had not occurred to him, as springs yielded to summers, and then as the cold snuck back in, and as Alexander all the while stayed pressed against his side in the daytime and underneath him in the evening, that someday, time would look at him and it would say: _I will keep going, and so you will lose him_. But then, John has never been good at predicting, and so the day comes that he and Alexander separate, and he watches Alexander head northward and it feels like the absence is ripping into his chest, separating his ribs and resting heavy over his lungs.

_Come visit us_ , Alexander’s letter had read. John had immediately shoved it into his desk drawer, where it had haunted him for weeks like a tell-tale heart, before receiving another, more insistent letter: _Laurens, if you do not respond to my invitation I must understand that you no longer wish to be associated, and shall throw myself heartbroken into my work at an even more ragged pace. Please let me know posthaste if I am mistaken_. 

_Of course you’re goddamn not_ , he thinks, rolling his eyes at Alex’s flair for the dramatic, and then sitting himself down and uncapping a jar of fresh ink. _My dearest Hamilton, I hope this letter finds you both well and forgiving of my tardiness. I of course wish to visit you as soon as is convenient for us both…_

He continues to be terrible at predicting. For all of his good intentions as he dropped the letter into the post, there is no part of him, he realizes, that had ever expected this day to actually arrive. And now, as he stands on the steps of his friend’s new home, he realizes that there is no part of him that believes that he will survive it; no part of him that believes that this will represent anything but the final rending apart of his own heart, a seam which had been sneaking across his soul since he first watched Alexander depart camp.

But John Laurens has never been one to run from a fight, so he straightens his collar and takes a deep breath as he prepares to knock on the door and meet Elizabeth Schuyler for the first time. He allows himself the kindness of reassurance, telling himself that he though he is heading into an ending, it is a coda to a more beautiful story than he could ever have had the right to imagine for himself. _You were never allowed to ask for this, but he gave it to you anyway._

He raps on the door.

“John Laurens,” breathes Elizabeth Schuyler as the door swings open, and her face is a revelation.

For years, John has marveled at the way that Alexander seems to be propelled forward by a fire somewhere deep within him. Alexander Hamilton has, he thought, taught him everything a person could ever need to know about reverence, about disbelief, about incredulity.

He sees, now: there was always more to know, and whatever was left out by Alexander’s broad sweeping promises has always lived in Eliza’s details. “Oh - be careful,” she tells him, her next words to him just as breathless as when she’d said his own name back to him. She does a funny sort of dance as she reaches for his hand and tries to pull him inside the house at the same time that she urges him to take care stepping over their threshold. “Loose stones,” she explains, words still tumbling out of her as she points downward. “He always says he’s going to fix it, but…” She straightens up. “Oh, nevermind. _John Laurens_.”

_She is marvelous_ , Alexander had said, once, and as he had huddled for warmth underneath canvas in the dirt and the darkness John had not understood, but now: he marvels. 

Her hair is pulled back, and he feels a wild shock of gratitude for it because it lets him see the lines of her face. Eliza, he knows, is twenty-three, and though he’d never thought about it for a moment before now, he finds that it feels desperately, hearteningly right that Alexander’s wife looks at the world, even so young as she is now, with a face that creases when she smiles. Now, joy soaks into the wrinkles around her eyes and reads him a million years of stories, all at once: sitting up at night, squinting to finish a letter by candlelight; laughing with her sister; worrying over Alexander. 

Smiling at him.

This woman with a million years of stories around her eyes spares kindness for him—kindness he _believes_.

“You must come in,” she insists. “Oh, John, John, it is just lovely to meet you. Truly.”

And so of course it would be like this. Of course John had no idea what the story was until this: Eliza Schuyler, holding out her hand at first to help him into her home and then changing her mind, pulling him into a hug before he’s even realized that she was only ever initially asking to guide him. 

It is certainly true that Eliza did not get there first. It may even be true that she won anyway. It may also be possible, though, that Eliza is not the type to win without sharing.


End file.
